The making of Jerusalem's 'Holy Basin'

Planning Perspectives

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 225-248

  Pullan, Wendy ^a   Sternberg, Maximilian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Colonial urbanism; Conservation; Imperialism; Jerusalem; Landscape; Picturesque; Planning; Sacred space

Indexed keywords

GEOGRAPHICAL REGION; NINETEENTH CENTURY; RELIGION; URBAN HISTORY; URBAN PLANNING;

ISRAEL; JERUSALEM [ISRAEL];

EID: 84859204453     PISSN: 02665433     EISSN: 14664518     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2012.646772     Document Type: Article

References (145)

1. The alignment of Jerusalem's city wall has remained constant since being rebuilt by the Romans in CE 135, but at various periods, Mount Zion has been included or excluded in the enclosure; today it lies outside the wall and is one of the few built-up extra-mural areas in the Holy Basin.
2. Wendy Pullan, '"Sacred Space" as Mediation', in The Church in the Post-Industrial Landscape, eds. Kees Dovendans and Gertjan van der Harst (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2004): 247-263.
3. Wendy Pullan and Maximilian Gwiazda, Mick Dumper and Craig Larkin, The Struggle for Jerusalem's Holy Basin (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2013).7
4. Wendy Pullan and Maximilian Gwiazda, 'Jerusalem's Holy Basin: Who Needs It?' Palestine-Israel Journal 17, nos. 1-2 (2011): 172-179.
5. Ruth Lapidoth and Amnon Ramon, The Historic Basin of Jerusalem. Problems and Possible Solutions (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2006)
6. Israel Kimhi, The Upper Kidron Valley: Conservation and Development in the Visual Basin of the Old City of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2010).
7. Pullan, 'Sacred Space'; more generally, on the idea of a sacralized world,
8. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).
9. While villages and summer houses already existed around and as part of the city, specifically urban development was begun in the 1860s. On the urbanization of Jerusalem outside the wall in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
10. Wendy Pullan, 'Shifting Paradigms in Jerusalem's New City' (Conflict in Cities Working Paper Series; www.conflictincities.org, forthcoming 2012).
11. Charles W. Wilson and Henry James, Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem (London: H.M. Stationery Office, G.E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, 1865).
12. 'The Topography of Jerusalem', Palestine Exploration Quarterly Statement 1 (Jan.-Sep.) (1869): 3-5.
13. Charles M. Watson, Palestine Exploration Fund: Fifty Years'Work in the Holy Land; A Record and a Summary 1865-1915 (London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1915).
14. Charles William Wilson, Jerusalem, The Holy City (London: J.S. Virtue & Co., 1889), 7.
15. On the voluminous literature on Jerusalem by European and North American authors in this period.
16. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh and Moshe Davis, Jerusalem in the Mind of the Western World, 1800-1948 (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 1997)
17. Annabel J. Wharton, Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
18. As books on the Holy Land became increasingly common, the subjects of the illustrations were more varied; besides cityscapes and holy sites, favourite themes include traditional street scenes with markets and vendors, derelict buildings that appear ancient and members of different ethnic groups in distinctive dress. The strange, the exotic and particularly what could be construed as a link to distant history were popular. Many of the New City institutional buildings built by European powers were also depicted.
19. J. Harris Proctor, 'David Roberts and the Ideology of Imperialism', The Muslim World 88, no. 1 (1988): 47-66.
20. Issam Nassar, European Portrayals of Jerusalem: Religious Fascinations and Colonialist Imaginations (Lewiston and New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006)
21. Kathleen S. Howe, Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1997).
22. Emmie Donadio, 'Seeing Is Believing: Auguste Salzmann and the Topographic Representation of Jerusalem', in Jerusalem: Idea and Reality, eds. Tamar Mayer and Suleiman Ali Mourad (London: Routledge, 2008), 140-154.
23. Haim Goren, 'Sacred, but Not Surveyed: Nineteenth-Century Surveys of Palestine', Imago Mundi 54, no. 1 (2002): 87-110.
24. At this time, maps of village lands were not normally drawn and their boundaries were known by customary geography, that is, using well-known landmarks such as trees and stones. It was only during the British Mandate that the agricultural lands were demarcated. On this topic.
25. Pullan, 'Shifting Paradigms'.
26. Gordon's highly obscure theory received considerable attention following his celebrated 'martyrdom' in Karthoum.
27. Charles G. Gordon, Reflections in Palestine (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884).
28. The location and authenticity of the Holy Sepulchre were widely debated and alternative sites were suggested before and after Gordon's visit to Jerusalem.
29. Sarah Kochav, 'The Search for a Protestant Holy Sepulchre: The Garden Tomb in Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem', The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46, no. 2 (1995): 278-301.
30. W.H. McLean, Regional and Town Planning: In Principle and Practice (London: C. Lockwood and Son, 1930), 63-66.
31. Henry Kendall, Jerusalem: The City Plan, Preservation and Development During the British Mandate, 1918-1948 (London: H.M.S.O., 1948), 6, in relation to the town plan prepared by Patrick Geddes in 1919.
32. Charles R. Ashbee and K.A.C. Creswell, eds., Jerusalem, 1920-1922: Being the Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council During the First Two Years of the Civil Administration (London: J. Murray, 1924), 2.
33. Benjamin Hyman, 'British Planners in Palestine, 1918-1936' (PhD diss., London School of Economics, 1994), 457.
34. Michael Sheviv's 1959 Outline Scheme only pertains to the western side of Jerusalem and, therefore, does not relate to the area adjacent to the Old City.
35. Aryeh Sharon, Planning Jerusalem: The Old City and Its Environs (Jerusalem: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), chap. 8.
36. The local Outline Plan for the Old City and Vicinity, known as Plan Ayin Mem 9, received legal approval in 1977 and was developed in conjunction with what is known as the '1968' master plan, published by A. Hashimshoni, Y. Schweid, and Z. Hashimshoni, Master Plan of Jerusalem 1968 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Municipality, 1972). Ayin Mem 9 did not acknowledge the Jerusalem Walls National Park of 1974, which throws its legality into question.
37. Arthur Kutcher, The New Jerusalem: Planning and Politics (London: Thames & Hudson, 1973), 8.
38. Arthur Kutcher, The New Jerusalem: Planning and Politics (London: Thames & Hudson, 1973), 11.
39. Arthur Kutcher, The New Jerusalem: Planning and Politics (London: Thames & Hudson, 1973), chap. 8. Kutcher's focal point is the Islamic Dome of the Rock.
40. Menachem Klein describes the Israeli understanding of the Holy Basin as '... the historical and religious heart of Jerusalem that includes, besides the walled area of the Old City, Mount Zion and the nearby Christian cemetery, the archaeological park along the Old City's southern wall and in the City of David, the Muslim cemetery along the eastern wall, and the Jewish cemetery and the churches on the Mount of Olives'.
41. The Jerusalem Problem: The Struggle for Permanent Status (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003), 71.
42. According to Klein, the concept of the Holy Basin was developed by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and the Centro Italiano Per la Pace in Medio Oriento (ECF) in 2001.
43. Menachem Klein, A Possible Peace between Israel and Palestine: An Insider's Account of the Geneva Initiative (New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2007), 105.
44. The concept of a special regime for the Old City goes back to the so-called Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement.
45. Michael Hirsch, 'The Lost Peace Plan: The 1995 Document that Paved the Way to Camp David, and Perhaps Beyond', Newsweek, September 25, 2000, 46.
46. Rami Nasrallah (Director of the Palestinian International Peace and Cooperation Center), in discussion with Max Gwiazda, February 2010.
47. PASSIA, 'Israeli Settlement Activities & Related Policies in Jerusalem', www.passia.org/ (accessed January 9, 2012); for an Israeli account of Palestinian views, see Klein, Possible Peace, 110.
48. Klein, Jerusalem Problem, 56.
49. Ruth Lapidoth and Amnon Ramon prefer the term 'historic basin' because it is 'less emotionally charged'. Historic Basin, 16. But it is precisely because the area is emotionally charged that it is contested and coveted and the focus of attention.
50. Ran Boytner and Lynn Dodd, 'Israeli-Palestinians Cultural Heritage Agreement' (Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and University of Southern California, 2007), http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/religion/arc/sh/ (accessed January 9, 2012).
51. Ruth Kark, Jerusalem Neighbourhoods. Planning and By-Laws (1855-1930) (Jerusalem: Mount Scopus Publications, 1991), 57-59
52. Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem. Rebirth of a City (Jerusalem: Domino and London: Chatto and Windus, 1985);
53. In the preface, Gilbert states that his history from 1838 to 1898 recounts the years when 'the city was transformed from little more than a crumbling ruin into a bustling metropolis' (11).
54. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Jerusalem: Magnes Press and Israel Exploration Society, 1983).
55. Salim Tamari, 'Confessionalism and Public Space in Ottoman and Colonial Jerusalem', in Cities and Sovereignty. Identity Politics in Urban Spaces, eds. Diane E. Davis and Nora Libertun de Duren (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011), 59-82.
56. Tamari states that 'the colonial process did not follow the guidelines of a single masterplan, but one with multiple actors navigating through spaces of ambiguous negotiability'. Ibid., 60.
57. Neil A. Silberman, Digging for God and Country: Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land, 1799-1917 (New York: Knopf/Random House, 1982).
58. The more divisive crusader motif complicated the discourse, but the official propaganda directive was to emphasize the image of benign stewardship of the holy places,
59. Eitan Bar-Yosef, 'The Last Crusade? British Propaganda and the Palestine Campaign, 1917-18', Journal of Contemporary History 36, no. 1 (2001): 87-109.
60. In a telegraph on 7 January 1918, to Gilbert Clayton, Sir Mark Sykes (then responsible for British Propaganda on Jerusalem) insists on the opportunities presented in Jerusalem's popular appeal to the 'English church and chapel folk; for New York Irish; Orthodox Balkan peasants and Mujiks; French and Italian Catholics; and Jews throughout the world; Indian and Algerian Moslems'. Quoted in ibid., 103.
61. 'The New Era in Jerusalem', The Times, December 30, 1920, 6.
62. Neil A. Silberman, 'Desolation and Restoration: The Impact of a Biblical Concept on near Eastern Archaeology', The Biblical Archaeologist 54, no. 2 (1991): 76-87.
63. According to Storrs, 'the hand of the Turk on Jew, Moslem and Christian lay ... a dead hand, and where it stretched all hope of development, moral or material, faded and withered away'; 'New Era', Times.
64. In a memorandum to the Chief Administrator on 18 August 1918, Ashbee notes that 'Coming into the city from the old pilgrim route, Mons Gaudii, we notice how the ancient Jerusalem is all but obliterated; we see the once Golden Dome no more, we see a bastard Florence, a bastard Nuremberg, a bastard Moscow, an imitation Louvre, a Bavarian suburb and an imitation Oxford.', 44-45.
65. Quoted in: Monk, Aesthetic Occupation, 29.
66. McLean, Regional Planning, 64-65.
67. Ronald Storrs, 1918, typescript, first page and title missing [September 1918]. Storrs Papers, Pembroke College Library 111/1. n.34, 98.
68. Kendall, Jerusalem, 4.
69. Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1920-1922, 12.
70. Charles R. Ashbee and K.A.C. Creswell, eds., Jerusalem, 1918-1920: Being the Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council During the Period of the British Military Administration (London: J. Murray, 1921), 12
71. Noah Hysler-Rubin, 'Arts & Crafts and the Great City: Charles Robert Ashbee in Jerusalem', Planning Perspectives 21, no. 4 (2006): 347-368
72. Alan Crawford, C.R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1985), chap. 12.
73. Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1920-1922, 4.
74. Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918-1920, 14.
75. Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1920-1922, 4.
76. Alois Riegel was the first to identify the power of what he termed the 'historical value' of the monument as a critical feature of modern conservation attitudes in 1903.
77. 'The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origins', in Oppositions Reader, ed. Michael Hays (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998): 621-651.
78. A systematic approach to the conservation of historic urban fabric as a whole only gained currency in the West with the Venice Charter of 1964.
79. Françoise Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument, trans. Lauren M. O'Connell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 130
80. Robert K. Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (London: Spon, 1997).
81. Gustavo Giovannoni was the first to clearly identify urban fabric as heritage from the perspective of urban conservation and planning.
82. Gustavo Giovannoni, 'Vecchie Città Ed Edilizia Nuova', Nuova Antologia 165(May-June) (1913): 449-472.
83. However, Giovannoni's argument that historic centres could play an active and connected part in urban development were long ignored outside Italy,
84. Choay, Historic Monument, 131-132.
85. Michael Dumper, Islam and Israel: Muslim Religious Endowments and the Jewish State (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1997), 25-27.
86. Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 85-89.
87. Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 144-145.
88. Oliver H. Creighton and Robert Higham, Medieval Town Walls: An Archaeology and Social History of Urban Defence (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), 243.
89. Ruskin was a conceptual pioneer, when he valorized the vernacular in addition to individual historic monuments. This did not affect conservation practice for some time, however.
90. Choay, Historic Monument, 119-120.
91. Pullan, 'Shifting Paradigms'.
92. Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918-1920, Figure 44.
93. Wendy Pullan and Lefkos Kyriacou, 'The Work of Charles Ashbee: Ideological Urban Visions with Everyday City Spaces', Jerusalem Quarterly 39 (Autumn) (2009): 51-61.
94. Clifford Holliday and Henry Kendall give favourable accounts of the demolition of buildings adjacent to Damascus and Jaffa Gates, respectively
95. C. Holliday 'Town Planning in Palestine. Government Report by the Town Planning Adviser', Journal of the Town Planning Institute 24, no. 6 (1938): 202-203
96. Kendall, Jerusalem, 17.
97. On the limitations of the Picturesque and the extensive influence of the English landscape garden on many cultures.
98. John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections (London: Thames & Hudson), 136-137; 208-209
99. Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976), chap. 1
100. Dennis Rodwell, Conservation and Sustainability in Historic Cities (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 25-29.
101. Shaul E. Cohen, 'Greenbelts in London and Jerusalem', Geographical Review 84, no. 1 (1994): 74-89.
102. The British Garden City movement targeted colonial planning as an outlet for its evangelizing, utopian visions
103. T.G. Chambers and C.B. Purdom, 'How to Get Garden Cities Established Throughout the World', Garden Cities and Town Planning 12 (1922): 97-99.
104. Ronald Storrs, Orientations (London: I. Nicholson & Watson, 1937), 315.
105. Elizabeth Meller, Patrick Geddes: Social Evolutionist and City Planner (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); Rodwell, Conservation, 30-33.
106. Patrick Geddes, 'Jerusalem Actual and Possible: A Preliminary Report on Town Planning and City Improvements', Mimeograph, Central Zionist Archive Jerusalem, Classmark: L4 (1919).
107. Quoted from article published in The Observer, July 2, 1919, appended to his report 67. Ibid., 3-4.
108. 'In the long run, if you think of it, the renewal of Athens and its university symbolizes nothing short of the re-Hellenizing of Europe .... And reviving Jerusalem stands for yet more - a true re-Hebraizing of Europe and the West; that is, the renewal of the ancient discernment of Unity, and this not only in the cosmic universe but in the moral order also.' Letter to Amelia Defries on 9 December 1913, cited Hyman, 'British Planners', 311.
109. Geddes, 'Jerusalem', 1.
110. Geddes, 'Jerusalem', 2.
111. Geddes submitted a plan as part of his report of 1919, which is truncated. A copy of a second map dating from a year later exists, which has an added sheet showing the southern edge of the basin area.
112. Hyman, 'British Planners', 26.
113. Geddes, 'Jerusalem', 18-19.
114. Pullan and Kyriacou, 'Ashbee'.
115. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 122-23.
116. Elisha Efrat, 'British Town Planning Perspectives of Jerusalem in Transition', Planning Perspectives 8, no. 4 (1993): 377-393 (348).
117. Henry Kendall, Letter to Chief Secretary from 12 May 1942, cited in Hyman 'British Planners', 90
118. It is possible that the detailed topocadastral surveys of the later 1920s and 1930s, and the dense agricultural land use of Jerusalem's villages they brought to light (previously ignored by British administrators), contributed to Kendall's reduction of parkland; on British survey work in Jerusalem.
119. Dov Gavish, A Survey of Palestine under the British Mandate, 1920-48 (London: Routledge), 99-103, 163-166.
120. Kendall was active again in Jerusalem in 1963-1966, see his biographical file at RIBA, London. Jordanian planning in East Jerusalem has not been subject to extensive scholarly investigation. Israeli architects and planners have focused (revealingly) on the Jordanians' apparent neglect of the open space and parkland policy in this period.
121. Moshe Safdie, The Harvard Jerusalem Studio: Urban Designs for the Holy City (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1986), 74;
122. Kutcher, New Jerusalem, 51.
123. Mount Scopus remained outside the jurisdiction.
124. Michael Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
125. Kimberly Katz, Jordanian Jerusalem Holy Places and National Spaces (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005).
126. Alona Nitzan-Shiftan argues that the Jerusalem Committee contributed to 'solidifying nationalism and imperialism in sanctified landscapes and poetic geographies' in the formative years of 1969-1975.
127. 'Modernisms in Conflict: Architecture and Cultural Politics in Post-1967 Jerusalem', in Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century, eds. Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi, 1st ed. (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2008), 161-185 (176).
128. Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, 'Capital City or Spiritual Center? The Politics of Architecture in Post-1967 Jerusalem', Cities 22, no. 3 (2005): 229-240.
129. Simone Ricca, Reinventing Jerusalem: Israel's Reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter after 1967 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007).
130. David Kroyanker, Developing Jerusalem 1967-1975 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Committee, 1975), 19.
131. Clearing medieval town walls was certainly common in Western conservation well into the 1970s, as, for example, in Britain.
132. Creighton, Town Walls, 244-245.
133. According to the building regulations published in the special Outline Plan for the Old City and Vicinity, there was to be no building within 75 m of the outer face of the wall. Within a 150 m perimeter, a building height was restricted to that of the city wall with a limited additional height proportional to the distance to the wall; see Sharon, Planning Jerusalem, 139, 150, 159.
134. Kutcher, New Jerusalem, 94-97.
135. Plan Ayin Mem 6 as discussed in From Public to National: National Parks in East Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Bimkom Planners for Planning Rights, 2008), 23-25.
136. The National Park was approved 2 years prior to that of the Outline Plan for the Old City and environs.
137. National Parks, 17.
138. David Kroyanker, Developing Jerusalem; David Kroyanker, Jerusalem: Planning and Development 1978/79 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Committee, 1979).
139. The National Parks, Nature Reserves, National Sites and Memorial Sites Law of 1998 enshrined the special legal status of National Parks, which existed from 1964 (based on earlier British ordinances of 1924 and 1926). The Law accords priority to the preservation of heritage and nature without obligation to balance this with other planning or local interests. It also prevents any revisions to the designation of a National Park through an alternative planning process. While a Park respects existing land ownership, all development postdating the declaration is subject to the Parks Authority's approval, which may bar building or land use without expropriation procedures. For further explanation, see National Parks, 12-14.
140. David Kroyanker, Developing Jerusalem; David Kroyanker, Jerusalem: Planning and Development 1978/79 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Committee, 1979). 23.
141. In relation to the Old City basin, influential planning and architectural studies produced subsequently, such as those of Safdie, Jerusalem Studio, were largely working within the framework established by Israeli planning in the 1970s.
142. Keren Kayemet L'Israel or Jewish National Fund was founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 in order to buy land in Palestine for Jewish settlement and reforestation. Today, the organization owns about 13% of the land of Israel and has planted 240 million trees. For further details, visit www.kkl.org.il/kkl/kklMain_Eng.aspx (accessed August 11, 2010); for an alternative point of view, visit www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/JNF/Story1513.html (accessed August 11, 2010).
143. The formation of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan into the 'City of King David' is the most blatant example.
144. Rafi Greenberg, 'Towards an Inclusive Archaeology in Jerusalem: The Case of Silwan/the City of David', Public Archaeology 8, no. 1 (2009): 35-50
145. Wendy Pullan and Maximilian Gwiazda, 'Designing the Biblical Present: Jerusalem's "City of David"', in Memory Culture and the Contemporary City: Building Sites, eds. Uta Staiger, Henriette Steiner and Andrew Webber (London: Palgrave Macmillian), 106-125.